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LETTER 


TO 


JOHN MURRAY, ESQ. 


FROM 

LORD NUGENT, 

/ 

• \Grr^-.v 

/L. 

TOUCHING AN ARTICLE IN THE LAST 


QUARTERLY REVIEW, 


OX A BOOK CALLED 

“ SOME MEMORIALS OF HAMPDEN, HIS PARTY, 

AND HIS TIMES.” 


# 



- 

LONDON: 


JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 


MDCCCXXXII. 




r 




39 ^ 



i 


LONDON: 

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES, 
Stamford-street. 


\ 


, ■ i 


9 


A LETTER 

&c. 


London , September 18, 1832. 


My dear Murray, 

I am much obliged to you for the copy you have sent 
me of the last Number of the Quarterly Review. I see it has at 
length honoured my book, intitled c Some Memorials of John 
Hampden, his Party, and his Times,’ with sixty-two pages of 
vehement animadversion. I say ‘ at length, 5 not less with refer¬ 
ence to the space to which the criticism extends, than to the time 
which the critick has taken to bring it to ripeness. Mr. Southey, 
in the title-page of some works,—not anonymous,—has announced 
them as the productions not only of a c Poet Laureate,’ but also 
of an ‘ Honorary Member of the Royal Spanish Academy,’ and 
of ‘ the Royal Spanish Academy of History,’ and of ‘ the Royal 
Institution of the Netherlands,’ and of ‘ the Cymmorodion,’— 
(the what?)—and of ‘ the Massachussets Historical Society, 5 of 
‘ the American Antiquarian Society, 5 of 6 the Royal Irish Aca¬ 
demy,’ and of ‘ the British Philological and Literary Society,’ 
&c. &c. Sec. ‘ It never rains but it pours;’ nor can I but feel 
some alarm at having so many at once upon me. My book 
appeared in November last: the review, Med with uncommon 
wrath,’ in August. Nine months of tedious gestation ! I should 
be sorry to be guilty of any neglect of so remarkable a person’s 
criticisms, and I might, peradventure, be accused of it, were I to 
leave the country without attempting an observation or two in 
reply to a few, very few, of them. An eminent man of our day 
was once, as he came out of church, asked by the preacher his 
opinion touching the sermon—Not much could be said in its 
praise. ‘ At all events, 5 said the preacher, endeavouring to sug¬ 
gest some topick of commendation which might be reflected back 
upon himself, ‘ At all events, it was not a long one.’ ‘No, it 
was not long,’ was the reply. ‘ Well,’ said the preacher, ‘ lam 
glad you thought it short, for I hate to be tedious. 5 ‘ Oh l’ 
answered the hearer, ‘ but it was tedious.’ I cannot apply this 
observation to Mr. Southey ;—for he was long too. 

A 2 


/ 



4 


With Mr. Southey’s political lucubrations on these our times, 
or on those of Charles I., I have nothing to do; nor with the 
parallel into which he has drawn them, and which, like all other 
parallels, has the property, though produced to an extreme length, 
of not approaching one jot nearer at the termination than at the 
outset. Mr. Southey, 1 find, in page 458, believes that there is 
some distinction between historical impartiality and historical 
justice ; so much so, that he gives license to depart from the one, 
but enjoins the observance of the other. Of this distinction I 
will say nothing, being, as I must confess, unable, probably from 
my owm incapacity, to comprehend it: I have always, in my sim¬ 
plicity, believed that history, like criticism, can be just only in the 
ratio of its impartiality. Nor w 7 ill I dispute wdth him touching 
his doctrine,—which, indeed, he veils in the modest obscurity of 
a learned language,—where, speaking of the manner in which he 
supposes Hampden to have obtained his first seat in Parliament 
for Grampound, he determines—(page 460)—that the ‘ sound of 
publick virtue and popular representation ’ are 1 vox et proeterea 
nihil.’ He may be right—I hope not, and I believe not. 

But there are a few points on which I would say a word. He 
complains that, when I ‘ noticed’—(I don’t like that word, for it is 
not English, he probably meant ‘noted ,’)—‘ the wealth and im¬ 
portance of Grampound in former times/ I did not ‘ observe that 
popular representation had about as much to do with the return of 
Hampden for that place as of the other sitting Members for that 
borough at any subsequent time ;’ and that * the glory of the 
example is an argument for the utility of the system.’ Now 
certain it is that I did not make either of these observations ; and, 
indeed, for this reason, that I think both of them shallow and 
untrue. The wealth and importance of a place is generally ac¬ 
companied by a certain influence of publick opinion, which tends 
to check the principle of direct nomination; and even if, as Mr. 
Southey assumes, the system of direct nomination did prevail at 
Grampound, it surely would be the reverse of truth to say that the 
glory of the example is any argument for the utility of the system. 
The glorious example of Marcus Aurelius was no argument for 
the utility of the system which afterwards conferred the empire of 
the world on the Augustuli, and destroyed Rome. 

Mr. Southey thinks it necessary—(in page 461)—to quarrel 
with the inference I have drawn from Hampden’s declining to 
seek a Peerage in the Presence Chamber of James I. But, in 
his attempt to avoid the solution which I have given, he falls into 
the very midst of it himself, and gives it as his own; and for the 
same reason, because it is the only one which can be given—namely, 
that 1 he differed from his mother upon this point, and that seeing 


. \ 


in the House of Commons the proper scene for that course of 
publick exertion which he had resolved upon pursuing, he made 
no application for a peerage. Even a due sense of family pride 
might alone have withheld him, at a time when the rank itself was 
degraded by the facility with which it was bestowed, and by the 
motives for bestowing it.’ Exactly so. 

Mr. Southey, observing on the famous report of Sergeant Glan- 
ville’s Committee on the cases of the petitioning boroughs, thinks 
it 4 not necessary to inquire what description of persons was meant' 
by the word 4 populacy,’ in the old charters. And yet some great 
and wise men considered it a most important point to decide in 
establishing the right to vote. Glanville, Selden, and Coke, so 
considered it in their report, which was favourable to the extended 
right, and Brady afterwards so considered it, although deciding 
in favour of the select corporations. All these great authorities 
thought it very 4 necessary to inquire,’ Glanville’s Committee con¬ 
tended, and Brady admitted, that it w as very 4 necessary to inquire ’ 
into the meaning of that word. Mr. Southey thinks otherwise, 
and so dismisses it. 

Referring to the early animosities of Charles’s reign, which Mr. 
Southey says (p. 464) that I have 4 decided with great compla¬ 
cency began in the violence of the King, and not in the conduct 
of the first Parliament,’ he accuses me of having been 4 so 
remarkably careless’ in my references, that I cite the Sydney 
papers, ii. page 360—365, where nothing relative to the subject 
is to be found.’ Now r , I may perhaps be careless in many things, 
but I have not been so in these references. 1 referred to those 
papers, as will be seen (Hampden, vol. i. p. 99, 100, 101) among 
other authorities, to show that the disgust of Parliament proceeded 
from sudden dissolutions, and from the raising of money by w ar¬ 
rants under the Privy Seal and other illegal modes. I am bound 
to go through the courteous form of believing that Mr. Southey 
had not looked at the Sydney papers when he hazarded this 
assertion. But, if he had not, I appeal to you, my dear Murray, 
though you do publish the Quarterly, why accuse me of being 
remarkably careless ? I have looked at the Sydney papers both 
before I quoted them and since. If Mr. Southey had, which, in 
courtesy, I repeat I am clear he did not, he would have seen, in 
vol. ii., p. 360 (I like to be particular), a letter from Sir John 
North to Robert Earl of Leicester, dated Wilton, Sept. 28, 1625, 
the following passage :—‘ From hence your lordship can expect 
no certain news, we have so many and sudden changes. The 
terme is not spoken of, nor any Parliament, only privy seals are 
sending forth to supply the King s pressing occasions' Fie would 
also have seen (vide p. 363), in a letter from Edward Lord 


Conway to ditto, dated from the Court at Wilton, 29th September, 
]625, the following passage : ‘ The leaving of the last Parliament 
soured all things' He would also have seen, in the same page, 
in a letter from Sir John North to ditto, dated October 17, 1625 : 

‘ This town (Salisbury) lent 2000 1. on the entreatye and bonds of 
my Lord Thresorer and the Chancellor of the Exchequer , which 
example was followed by the townsmen of Southampton tor a 
loan of one thousand pounds. The privy seals are dispersed in 
all shires and corporations to supply another necessity with the 
money that is expected that way , all which are but shifts until 
recourse be had to another Parliament, which is already spoken of, 
but the time not known.' 

Now r this is what 1 call very audacious in Mr. Southey, and not 
over-honest. Nor is it very wise to assert that a false citation has 
been made, taking the chance of the assertion being believed, where 
the book so cited happens to be one of easy reference. Mr. 
Southey (p. 465) calls power of commitment per ipsum regem the 
t unwise exercise of an undue, but hitherto undisputed power,' If 
he meant in this sentence a power till then undisputed, he would 
have probably said so. ‘ Hitherto undisputed’ means ‘ till now 
undisputed,’ which, by every one who knows even the elements 
of the English history or constitution, is known not to be the 
case. 

To Mr. Southey’s praises of Mr. D’Israeli as an ‘ impartial’ 
historian, a ‘ benevolent’ historian, an historian who puts ‘ the 
most charitable construction’ upon the actions of all men, an 
‘ accurate’ as well as ‘ a most agreeable and instructive one,’ I can 
have no objection. 

I have no fancy for going over again the reasons I have already 
expressed at length in my book for holding a contrary opinion. I 
am tired of that subject, and so, probably, by this time, is Mr. 
1)’Israeli. I will only observe that Mr. Southey has, in support 
of these laudatory propositions, given what a sailor would term ‘ a 
wide berth ’ to the whole of that passage, in which Mr. D’lsraeli 
doubts whether Pym was c too deeply calumniated ’ by the accu¬ 
sation of 1 having received a bribe from France,’—a fact which I 
rebut on the authority which Mr. D’lsraeli misquotes, namely, 
Clarendon ; not to mention the doubt which may be entertained 
whether a man ought to be calumniated at all. Nor does he 
happen to instance the other in which that ‘ benevolent’ and 
i accurate’ historian accuses Hampden of having, on account of a 
base private pique against a high sheriff (with whom, it appears, 
he was on perfectly good terms), ‘ drawn his sword to shed the 
blood of half the nation.* 

1 must also observe that Mr. Southey, when he restates (p. 479) 


N 


7 

the old story ol Sir John Eliot’s having treacherously stabbed Mr. 
Moyle, and says that 4 the treachery is denied in another version 
of the same story produced by Lord Nugent ,’ neglects to state that 
that other and opposite version was the one given by Mr. Moyle’s 
own daughter. 

I will not pause upon pages 478 and 479 of the 4 Review,’ 
further than to elucidate Mr. Southey’s remarkable statement that 
‘ James I. (like Charles and his grandson) never said a foolish 
thing.’ I would suggest a careful re-perusal of his sayings to and 
concerning 4 Stenny and Baby Charles,’ and a few of the cate¬ 
gories contained in his speeches on opening his Parliaments 
touching kings being 4 the lieutenants and vicegerents of God on 
earth, and so adorned and furnished with some sparkles of the 
divinity.’ A very foolish thing to say. 

But I come at once to the note at the foot of page 485-6, con¬ 
cerning Bishop Laud, the Star Chamber, and Prynne, Bast- 
wick, and Burton. In the commencement of it, Mr. Southey is 
lively at the expense of one of my sentences, in which I say that 
Laud 4 revived those bloody scenes of human agony and mutilation 
which were part of the ordinary punishment of the pillory.’ If 
they were ordinary , observes Mr. Southey, pleasantly, how 
could he be said 4 to have revived them?’ Under favour, I deny 
that 1 said that the mutilations, &c., had been or were ordinary. 
I said that Laud revived those mutilations, &c., which, (when so 
revived by Laud,) formed ‘ part of the ordinary punishment of 
the pillory’—and I take leave to repeat both the phrase and the 
fact. Against the fact Mr. Southey cites Bishop Laud’s own 
History of his Troubles and Trials, (pp. 144-6,) in which he 
says, 4 In the giving of this sentence , I spake my conscience, and 
afterwards was commanded to print my speech, but I gave no 
vote, &c.’ Here again Mr. Southey is incorrect. Laud is speaking 
not of the mutilations but of the subsequent banishment. For the 
fact of his having been an active accessory in the cruel punishment 
of the branding, slitting the nose, cropping the ears, &c., I beg 
to cite his own signature attached to the warrant for the infliction 
of it on these very victims. I say nothing of his having taken oft 
his bonnet to give thanks to God who had put it into the hearts of 
the council to do this thing. 

Mr. Southey enters (p. 496) into an elaborate vindication of a 
former article in the Quarterly Review, in which, on no authority, 
it charged Hampden with having been a party to an attempted 
compromise in favour of Lord Straftord's life, and that, being dis¬ 
appointed in his expectations, he was 4 thereby determined on 
shedding blood.’ He would make good for the Quarterly its re¬ 
treat from this unsupported sally, by re-quoting Whitelocke, (who 


8 


by the way, says no such thing,) and then proceeds to veil over 
the exposed inaccuracy, by confounding it with the lesser charge 
brought by Whitelocke after the Restoration—that ‘ there was a 
proposal,’ (he does not say whose,) 1 to restore Strafford to his 
former favour and honour, if the king would prefer some of the 
grandees to offices at court.’ I must take the liberty of protesting 
against the Quarterly Review being allowed to escape thus. I did 
not deny that such a proposal was made. But I said that ‘ none 
of those persons who were named for office appear to have been 
privy to any compromise, except the Earl of Bedford.’ I showed 
that the Quarterly Review had no authority for accusing John 
Hampden of being any party to a compromise, nor to what it 
calls an ‘ extra legal murder;’ I showed that he no where appears 
to have taken any part for the bill of pains and penalties ; and I 
showed, from Sir Ralph Verney’s notes made at the time, that on 
one occasion—the only one on which his name appears in these 
debates—he seems to have argued against it. 

We proceed to the popular disturbances in consequence of the 
attempt to impose upon Scotland the English Liturgy, to the two 
Scottish wars and treaties, and to the conduct of the country party 
in England towards their Scottish ‘ brethren.’ (p. 492.) Why 
did the Scots take arms, and keep them ? and why did the 
patriots of England abet the Scots in delaying the disembodying 
of that army, so long as the king’s army should remain in force 
upon the border ? This question might be answered peradventure 
in some such words as these, with which Mr. Southey is not alto¬ 
gether unacquainted— 

4 We must remain embodied, else the king 
Will plunge again in royal luxury, 

And, when the storm of danger is past over, 

Forget his promises : 

Ay, like an aguish sinner, 

He’ll promise to repent, while the fit’s on him, 

When well recovered, laugh at his own terrors.’* 

But there are lengths to which neither the Scots nor the country 
party of England proceeded in their doctrines or reasonings; as 
for example: 

‘ Oh, I am grieved that we must gain so little ! 

Why are not all these empty ranks abolished? 

King, slave, and lord ennobled into man ? 

Are we not equal all ? Have you not told me 
Equality ’s the noblest right of Man, 

Inalienable, though by force withheld ? 

Even so.—But, Piers, my frail and feeble judgment 
■ ■ — —"? ■ . .— -------- 

* Mr. Southey’s Wat Tyler, 



9 


Knows hardly to decide if it be right 
Peaceably to return content with little, 

With this half restitution of our rights, 

Or boldly to proceed through blood and slaughter, 

Till we should all be equal and all happy— 

I chose the middle way—perhaps I erred !* ’ 

But I have done with this : this was no part of tlieir doctrine : 
if it had, Mr. Southey’s invective, against those whom he suspects 
to have been the abettors or apologists of such treason against 
monarchy and social order, might have awakened an answering 
sentiment in breasts even less conservative than his own. 

I now proceed to Hampden’s famous speech on the impeach¬ 
ment of himself and the four other members, a part of which, 
cis asserting the doctrine of jiassive obedience , Mr. Southey has 
been pleased to say, I have suppressed. To this I have one answer 
only to give,— I have not! And this answer I give with at least 
as much civility as that with which the member of so many in¬ 
stitutions of polite literature has insinuated that I am ‘ prepared 
to account hypocrisy and falsehood among a patriot’s accomplish¬ 
ments.’ I have not garbled that speech, nor suppressed any part 
of the doctrines contained in it, but Mr. Southey has. ^And I 
refer to the published speech, London, 1642, easily to be ob¬ 
tained ; compare it with the version in my book, and then with 
that in Mr. Southey’s article in the Quarterly Review. I call you, 
my dear Murray, forth as a juryman, from that little back room of 
yours, where you are even now preparing to publish the forthcoming 
number of the ‘Quarterly,’ and I stake my character against Mr. 
Southey’s, since he has brought it to that pass, on the issue of the 
fact. 

John Hampden’s speech professes to define the difference between 
a good and bad subject, and divides it under these heads:—‘ Re¬ 
ligion towards God, loyalty and due submission to the lawful com¬ 
mands of the sovereign, and good affection towards the safety and 
just rights of the people , according to the ancient and fundamental 
laws of the realm: This, Mr. Southey, professing to give the 
whole speech , suppresses , and then accuses John Hampden of 
hypocritically supporting the doctrine of passive obedience! 

John Hampden states as the duties oi a subject, 1st. Lawful 
subjection to a king in his own person, and the commands, &c., 
of the prince and his privy council. 

2nd. Lawful obedience to the laws , statutes , and ordinances 
enacted by the King and the Lords, with the free consent of the 
great council of State assembled in Parliament. And this it 
pleases Mr. Southey to call t he doctrine of passive obedience! 

* Mr. Southey’s Wat Tyler. 





10 


John Hampden proceeds to say that ‘ to deny a willing and 
dutiful obedience to a lawful Sovereign and his privy council, or 
to deny to defend his royal 'person and kingdom , or his ancient 
privileges and prerogatives pertaining and belonging of right to 
his royal crown/ or ‘ to deny to defend and maintain true religion 
established in this land according to the truth of God , is a sign of 
a bad subject. 

Secondly, ‘ to yield obedience to the commands of a King if 
against the true religion and the ancient and fundamental laws of 
the land, is another sign of an ill subject .’ And this it pleases 
Mr. Southey to call the doctrine of passive obedience ! 

Thirdly. ‘ To resist the lawful power of the King, or raise in¬ 
surrection against him, admit him averse in his religion, to con¬ 
spire or rebel against his sacred person , though commanding things 
against our consciences in exercising religion, or against the rights 
and privileges of the subject, is an absolute sign of a disaffected 
and traitorous subject.’ And this doctrine is limited, observe, to 
obedience to the lawfid power of the King, and prohibiting vio¬ 
lence to his person , or rebellion though he exercise such power as 
the law may give him, even against religion, or right, or privileges. 
And Mr. Southey calls this the doctrine of passive obedience! 
Hampden proceeds with the inverse of the proposition, and de¬ 
scribes a ‘ loyal and good subject’ by the performance of the 
duties which he has before described the bad subject as neglecting 
or betraying. This is the passage which Mr. Southey accuses me 
of suppressing. It is the exact inverse of the case of the ‘ good 
subject,’ and the doctrine is, article for article, the same. And 
again I stake my character against Mr. Southey’s, since he has 
brought it* to that pass, that, throughout, there is not a duty en¬ 
joined in the second part that is not enjoined in the first, and in 
like manner qualified and guarded by the phrase ‘ lawful power.’ 

But now 1 come to Mr. Southey’s own suppressions; and I 
must trouble you with the longest passage of Hampden’s speech. It 
is the summing up, valuable as such, and valuable as a frank ex¬ 
position of the doctrines on which hang the essential duties which 
the subject of a free monarchy, with a representative government, 
owes to the great council of the State :— 

‘ I conceive if any particular member of a Parliament, although his 
judgment and vote be contrary, do not willingly submit to the rest, he 
is an ill subject to his King and country ; and, secondly, to resist the 
ordinance of the whole state of the kingdom , either by the stirring up 
a dislike in the hearts of his Majesty's subjects of the proceedings of 
the parliament, to endeavour, by levying arms, to compel the King 
and parliament to make such laws as seem best to them, to deny the 
power , authority , and privileges of parliament , to cast aspersions upon 


11 


the same and its proceedings, thereby inducing the King to think ill 
of the same, and to be incensed against the same, to procure the un¬ 
timely breaking up and dissolution of a Parliament, before all things 
be settled by the same, for the safety and tranquillity both of King and 
state , these are apparent signs of a treacherous and disloyal subject 
against his King and country. I humbly desire my actions may be 
compared with either; and both as a subject, a Protestant, as a native 
of this my country, and as I am a member of this present and happy 
Parliament, that I be esteemed, as I shall be found guilty upon these 
articles exhibited against myself and the other gentlemen, to be a bad 
or a good subject to my Sovereign and native country ; and to receive 
such sentence upon the same, as by this honourable House shall be 
conceived to agree with law and justice.’ 

And the whole of this passage Mr. Southey suppresses , and, 
having suppressed it, he accuses me of garbling the text, and 
Hampden of supporting, in this speech, the doctrine of passive 
obedience ! My dear Murray, I will not apply a term to this be¬ 
yond what I have said touching another passage in this review. 

‘ This is what I call very audacious in Mr. Southey, and not over 
honest.’ And I end as I began,—l stake my character against 
Mr. Southey’s, since he has brought it to that pass, on the issue 
of the fact. One* of us has, doubtless, been guilty of a fraud. 
Either I, for the purpose of unjustly procuring an acquittal for 
Hampden’s memory, or he, for that of procuring an unjust con¬ 
demnation of it. 

But, my dear Murray, Mr. Southey is very hard, in other re¬ 
spects, on the character of Hampden. Almost every sentence is 
an indictment, for that he did, with divers others, to wit, the Par¬ 
liaments of three kingdoms, at divers times, between the years 
1625 and 1643, conspire with force and arms, &c. &c. &c. against 
the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his crown, and dig¬ 
nity. That is the issue to be tried. The doctrine of resistance, 
(however wantonly dealt with in former times by some riotous 
spirits in this country during the excesses of the French Carmagnole 
Revolution,) is, (as probably Mr. Southey will now agree with 
me,) neither convenient nor useful matter for abstract discussion. 
Nor would any wise or good man attempt to dogmatise on such 
extreme cases as those in which it can become a question either of 
natural right or moral duty. In reading or writing history each 
man must judge of the particular cases as they present themselves 
to the soberest consideration which he can apply to them. There 
are, however, passages in the lives of some publick men, which, 
on general grounds, cannot fail to draw down suspicion (sometimes 
indeed reprobation) on their memories. From these the memory 
of Hampden is free. Mr. Southey may think it just to impute 
craft and dissimulation to Hampden : he cannot accuse him of 


faithlessness or inconstancy. If, indeed, John Hampden had ever 
spoken to the people of England after this fashion— 

‘ These are truths and mighty ones : 

Ye are all equal—Nature made you so— 

Equality is your birth-right. When I gaze 
On the proud palace, and behold one man 
In the blood-purpled robes of royalty, 

Feasting at ease, and lording over millions, 

Then turn me to the hut of poverty, 

And see the wretched labourer, worn with toil, 

Divide his scanty morsel with his infants, 

I sicken, and, indignant at the sight, 

Blush for the patience of humanity !* ’ 

Or thus, to his sovereign,— 

‘ King of England, 

Petitioning for pity is most weak, 

The Sovereign people ought to demand justice !| ’ 

Or thus, again, to the people,— 

‘ The service of the State demands more money! 

Just Heaven ! of what service is the State ’ 

If, I repeat, John Hampden had ever said this, or anything like 
this, and then, pleading his youth as the excuse of his forepast ex¬ 
cess, had been seen at hve-and-forty, on the pension list, and in a 
place at court, beginning to denounce as rebels the founders and 
champions of England’s grave and manly freedom, I say, the truth 
of history might have recorded that John Hampden, at the former 
period, went far beyond the doctrines of those whom at the latter 
he could not view even with charity or toleration; and that, at 
the latter period, he went far beyond the doctrines of those whom 
at the former he had thought not deserving to hold station, and 
scarcely to hold life, in a free commonwealth. 

Mr. Southey has questioned the conclusion to which I come 
respecting the nature of the wound of which John Hampden died, 
tie asks why I reject a gossiping story of Horace Walpole’s of his 
having come to his death by a pistol bursting in his hand. Why, 
simply because it is a mere gossiping story disposed of very tho¬ 
roughly, as it appears to me, on an authority which I have given 
in a note which it did not suit Mr. Southey’s convenience to see. 
It is on the testimony of the grandson of the very person whom 
Horace Walpole quotes for his story, and who had lived with him for 
many years,—himself too a person for whose office, if not for his 
name, Mr. Southey should have borne some respect; for he too w as 
a poet-laureate—Mr. Pve. I took the narrative which I give 

* Mr. Southey’s ‘ Wat Tyler.’ f Id. ^ + Id. 




from the concurrent testimony of Clarendon, Sir Philip Warwick, 
and all the other contemporary historians, and all the dinr- 
nals and tracts of the time, which agree that John Hampden 
received a wound in his shoulder from a shot, of which he lan¬ 
guished and died. But nothing will serve Mr. Southey but he 
must quote me against myself, and say that I have made personal 
observation of the state of John Hampden’s wrist, and saw that it 
was shattered. Not I, indeed. Mr. Southey quotes a very silly, 
distasteful narrative of a supposed very ghastly transaction, which 
he says he derives from the pages of the ‘ Gentleman’s Magazine,’ 
which silly, distasteful narrative, he says, was supposed to have 
been written by myself, or under my authority. Not it, indeed. 
If I, who have, to my shame, misspent much time in the course 
of my life, had written a story for the ‘ Gentleman’s Maga¬ 
zine,’ it should not have been a filthy story against myself. Mr. 
Sylvanus Urban is a very good man in his way; but, like many 
other very good men, very accessible to that very unfair guerilla mode 
of attack popularly called hoax, or humbug.—And I say this from 
experience. I remember that, many years ago, when I was at 
college, I and others had contracted a habit of wasting much valu¬ 
able time, which ought to have been better employed, in putting 
that excellent person’s gullibility to the proof. Any dose in the 
shape of a little twaddling bit of intelligence from a correspond¬ 
ent, ‘ which Sylvan loves,’ Sylvan ever swallowed with ‘ innocent 
delight,’ and ‘made the treacherous gift immortal as himself.’ I 
state this to the credit of his unsuspicious nature. I certainly did see, 
in 1828, while the pavement of the chancel of Hampden church 
was undergoing repair, a skeleton, which I have many reasons for 
believing was not John Hampden’s, but that of some gentle¬ 
man, or lady, who probably died a quiet death in bed, certainly 
with no wound in the wrist. 

I have now gone through the principal points of Mr. Southey’s 
attack. He accuses me, in general terms, of speaking of the 
parliamentary party of those times in a tone of exaggerated eulogy, 
and very disparagingly of the royalists. This is a question of 
opinion and of taste, which I will not dispute with him. I cer¬ 
tainly thought very much the contrary, and think so still; and I 
would cite the characters which I endeavour to draw of St. John, 
Pym, the Earls of Northumberland, Salisbury, and Holland, and 
Lord Stamford, of whom I am much mistaken if I speak with 
anything like unqualified praise. I would cite, also, the willing 
testimony of admiration I bear to the greatness of Lord Strafford, 
and to the virtues of Lord Lindsey, the Duke of Richmond, Lord 
Falkland, my own brave ancestor Sir Bevill Grenvil, and to many 


14 


of the high qualities of Charles himself. In this 1 leave myself 
to publick trial; but i challenge the Laureate as a juror. 

What remains of Mr. Southey’s article is mere abuse,—terms 
partakings of that figure of speech called balderdash, such as 
‘ macradicalized whig,’ ‘ lamentably bewhigged,’ 4 party pleader,’ 
and the like. Now, my dear Murray, nicknames are full as bad 
evidence of good reasoning as of good manners. And, as for mere 
thundering invective, that is a weapon which every man may find 
ready to his hand for the mere pains of stooping for it. For in¬ 
stance. It would be easy for me to say this.—There are imputa¬ 
tions more injurious and more lasting than that of radicalism or 
whiggery. Mr. Southey may, if it please him, think me a radi¬ 
cal ;—at all events he will not accuse me of being a renegado. 
He may accuse me of having been lamentably misled into whig 
gism : he will not accuse me of having been shamefully pensioned 
into toryism. He may accuse me of being the c bigoted wor¬ 
shipper of John Hampden he will not accuse me of being the 
apostate apologist of Wat Tyler— 

‘ Nay, an’ he mouth it, 

I can rant as well as he.’ 

And who is Mr. Southey ? and what right has he to lecture 
me thus? ‘ It may assist Lord Nugent,’ says he, ‘ to call to 
mind the observation of Han ton,—the Ajax of the French Re¬ 
volution, as he was called by his admirers,—for he, too, had his 
admirers !’ Oh, yes, that bloody monster had his admirers ! I do 
not charge Mr. Southey with having been among them, though he 
would insinuate that I am the admirer of one whom he thinks it fit 
to represent as his parallel. But this I do know ; that the youth¬ 
ful Mr. Southey was among the self-recorded admirers of that 
revolutionary system in which Danton and Robespierre were lead¬ 
ing lights, while the scaffolds of Paris were yet streaming with 
carnage, and that it was not till the perpetrators of it had been 
for many years in their graves that the matured Mr. Southey 
grasped his anti-revolutionary pen and contemporaneous pension. 
Do I venture to rebuke Mr. Southey for having ceased to be the 
encomiast of a system which led to such execrable wuckedness ? 
Do I rebuke him for having rushed into the opposite extreme,— 
for having quitted, not WTong for right, but one wrong for its op- 
site w'rong,—and for being consistent in this at least, the having 
been in both extremes equally the antagonist of the principles of 
good government and of the English constitution?—Not I. But 
I adopt Mr. Southey’s own words. ‘ He who fraternizes with 
them for any half-way purpose of his own, knowing at what they 
aim, which he cannot choose but know because it is loudly and 
insolently proclaimed by them, will, one day, (whatever may have 


15 


been his own intentions,) have cause, like Danton, in bitterness of 
soul, to ask forgiveness of God and man. 7 And if I now saw Mr. 
Southey in penitential sadness and shame asking forgiveness of 
God and man for the rank errors of his youth, 1 might applaud 
the effort at humble atonement. But when I see him assuming 
the posture and tone of a political censor, impeaching the honesty 
and reviling the conduct of those who never adopted in their poli¬ 
ticks a course which, in their minds, required to be changed or 
repented, I would venture to suggest that to abstain from judging, 
to the end that he might not be judged of men, would be, in it¬ 
self, commendable, and an advantageous compromise for Mr. 
Southey. There is an old adage concerning the throwing of 
stones by one whose windows are made of a frail material.—Win¬ 
dows of glass ? Why, Mr. Southey’s whole house is made of 
nothing else ! 

But, my dear Murray, Mr. Southey entertains 1 a strong and 
abiding hope,’ which he congratulates himself ‘ rests not on hu¬ 
man wisdomand he feels that he 1 cannot conclude his paper 
more appropriately 7 than with a very sorry sonnet on the General 
Fast. I will spare him the republication of a sonnet composed of 
sad lines like these— 

‘ The people pray’d 

As with one voice ; their flinty hearts grew soft 

With penitential sorrow, and aloft 

Their spirit * mounted, crying, “ God, us aid.” ’ 

‘ God help us,’ indeed ! Mr. Southey says, the verses ( affiliate 
themselves, and would give additional proof, if necessary, that 
the highest intellect of the country is on the same side with that 
piety and that feeling. 7 By which I understand him to mean, 
that the verses were written by himself.-—Happy it is that they have 
this faculty of self-affiliation ; for what a devil of a muse she would 
be who could swear such a sonnet to the Laureate! 

But now Mr. Southey may peradventure say that I have no 
right to assume him to be the writer of the article at all. Oh, 
yes, but 1 have ! I beg thus publickly to acquit you, my dear 
Murray, of having told tales out of the school of the Quarterly; 
but, answer me,—could ever any man, even much less shrewd of 
judgement than yourself, and much less acquainted with the 
affiliated productions of Mr. Southey, be mistaken in this ? 

Mr. Southey ends with a bad sonnet—I will end with an indif¬ 
ferent good story. I have heard of a German baron, who was 
once known at Bath by a lame and withered hand. He received 
his w'ound thus.—He was once gambling with an Irish gentleman, 


* False quantity. 



6 


who thought the cards were not played fair, and felt very sure it 
was the baron at his tricks. The Irish gentleman took a decisive 
course; he seized a fork, and, sticking it through the baron’s hand, 
pinned it to the table, exclaiming, ‘ If Pam be not under that 
gentleman’s hand, I’ll beg his pardon.’ But the knave was there. 

Ever, dear Murray, 

Your’s, very truly, 

Nugent. 


S P ~ 9 


* 8 6 . 


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